This video interview was recorded on September 16, 2015, and originally posted on SMB Group Spotlight.
Laurie: Hi, this is Laurie McCabe from SMB Group and I’m talking with Rob Reid, CEO at Intacct, who was honored with the Glassdoor CEO of the Year award last year in the small and midsized company category. This is the second part of a two-part video series and in this part, I’m talking to Rob about some of his tips and perspectives on business as someone who’s founded and run a lot of successful businesses, what are some of the key areas that you could focus on to advance your business and get ahead.
Rob: You know, I a lot of people ask me so, how were you able to create this organization and have a culture that seems to really be working? The first thing I’d pass on is you need to have a really compelling mission. The mission must be customer-centric, and driven by why you’re doing it, not how you’re doing it. When people come to Intacct, most think, oh they do accounting and finance management and ERP and I’m like, no. We’re helping change the world. For instance, we work with the Nike Foundation, and they go on in and help improve women’s’ ability to start businesses in Africa. How does Intacct help empower that? As Nike instituted programs across Africa, they found a lot of inconsistency in the success rate of women starting their own businesses. Intacct has gone in and we broke down village-by-village what was happening. So Nike could see what was working and change their program for higher success rates. That’s the kind of mission we have.
Laurie: Helping companies understand what levers they need to pull to create success
Rob: The other tip, and this seems obvious to most people, but organizations need to hire the right people. It’s like “Ah, yeah, yeah. Hire the right people.” But what you have to do is you have to hone in on the individual’s traits. What we do at Intacct is we look at first, is, are you a customer-centric type of individual? Do you care about others? Do you care about the customer? Do you care about your fellow employees? Do you care about our partners? If people inject in the interview process say, “Well, tell me about my budget responsibility” or “Tell me about how many people are going to be reporting to me” or “Tell me about how fast I’m going to be able to move up in the organization?” they may not fit in.
Laurie: Like “me, me, me”?
Rob: Yeah, this means “No, no, no!.” What we want to hear is, “Tell me how I can contribute. Tell me about how other people here and how they work together to have a bigger meaning.” We also look for people who are just naturally curious. Because if you’re naturally curious, you’re going to attack the status quo. If you attack the status quo, we go back to that other point of trying to improve whatever we’re working on. There are a lot of times where you work hard, and it’s like “Look at what we did!” And we’re like, “That’s great. Now how are we gonna do better?” And they go, “Oh yeah. Oh yeah! Yeah, let’s go do better!” We really try to look at how can we hire the talent that aligns for our mission. Now, what we’ve done at Intacct may not be right for others. But you need to think about what are the traits that you need in an individual in your organization? We’ve found that team players, that are customer-centric and very curious, are the best fit. Intacct has the highest customer satisfaction rating in the whole ERP industry, not just cloud, not just midmarket, according to both G2 Crowd and Entrust Radius. We’re off the charts in comparison to everybody else. I interview every person, making sure that they’ve got the right traits and the right kind of behaviors and the right attitudes. You know, in our industry we’re lucky enough that we have really intelligent people so most people walking through the door are smart, they’re motivated, now are they gonna fit in to be able to take it to the next level?
Laurie: Culturally. Yes, culture’s really important.
Rob: You know, my son was in crew in college. It isn’t all about just the strength of pulling the oar, it’s pulling it together in unison. If one person hits that water a little bit differently, guess what? The boat starts to go in a different direction. So that’s one of the things that we are trying to achieve at Intacct, is making sure everyone’s pulling together. It’s amazing what you can do when you’ve got a true team all pulling.
Laurie: I’m sure it makes a difference for the customers too, and that’s why Intacct’s customer retention’s so high.
Rob: So there’s another thing that is really important. That’s to have clear, defined goals and objectives. And getting them written down, and mutually agreed upon. It allows you to hold people accountable. When I talk with others and they’re saying, “Yeah you know, it just doesn’t feel like we’re achieving the kind of success we’d like to have.” It’s one of the first things I ask them is, does everybody in the organization have written objectives? Whether it be weekly, monthly, quarterly, whatever it might be, whatever’s right for that organization, get it in writing and mutually agreed upon.
Laurie: I love that because I think too many times we all have our own assumptions and we don’t make sure that they’re synced up.
Rob: Right. Then one other thing is that we’re dealing mainly with knowledge workers and they like to be stimulated by more than just work and we really like to have a work life balance. It’s not just work.
Laurie: Hallelujah!
Rob: It’s work and life so we encourage that our employees take time with their families. We encourage that they give back to their community. The organization invests in a lot of different community types of programs and you know, I think that then our employees feel like we’re really, we really do care, which we do. And having an empathetic, caring, curious organization is just a wonderful thing.
Laurie: Rob, these are great perspectives, great insights into Intacct and its culture that other companies can learn from. I really appreciate your time and thank you for talking to me today
Rob: It was super seeing you again, and thank you Laurie.